Joel Morris - Burqa and Dome

Big Kite "Burqa"

Big Kite "Dome"

For my kites, I wanted to use the theme of connection, and not only try and connect to the culture of the UAE, but tie in my aesthetic as well. I initially had three small kites and a large kite that I cut down to size. For my first designs, I was thinking of creating two smaller kites, one in the fashion of a woman’s Kandura, a piece of traditional dress worn underneath the abaya by women. My plan was to make a design based on the embroidery found on a woman’s   Kandura sleeves. I thought of using an underlying geometric tessellation for both kites and one the woman’s, adding Talli, the metallic embroidery of the Kandura around the edges, and for the man’s, adding a Tarboosh, the tassel which hangs from the neck of the men’s Kandura. I eventually changed the design and the final one featured an Islamic geometric pattern that I created myself. I then superimposed a Shyla covered woman over the design. I used Illustrator to eliminate the actual face of the woman, but I added a Burqa. When we initially started talking to Nathan and the girls from the university, I immediately knew I wanted to incorporate something with Islamic designs. I initially thought of using the designs of a Kandura, but when they sent the images of the Burqa I fell in love with the way it looked,the history of why UAE woman used them, and decided I wanted to use it. I then had to glue my small kites onto a thicker paper so that the printers in the ICOR Lab would print on the kites. The three small kites were eventually cut up into smaller pieces to create a larger kite. My first large kite was cut down to size, and unfortunately didn’t fly. With the suggestion of making another big kite, I was pressed for another design so I decided to have one face in the center of the kite, then cut the others around the lines of the geometric patterns and glue them around the central face, as if the image was shattered.  

For my other large kite, the original, I wanted to do something that was a little bit more my style. I started out sketching the eye in the center, then the rays around that, and finally the hands above and below the central image. I drew horns on the left and right side of the eye, but it didn’t read horn so much as eyebrow, so I scratched those and decided to incorporate some of my other knowledge of Islamic culture and use that as a base. I drew the circles around the eye, and wings within the inner circle. My thought behind this was the architecture of most Mosques, and how the dome represented the Vaults of Heaven. In most Islamic cultures, the domes are decorated with elaborate floral patterns and Arabic script, but in keeping it more so with my personal aesthetic, I came up with my design. The eye kind of symbolized Allah, or the universe, the hands being representative of a more occult ideology of As Above, So Below. The wings and the circles around the eye were a nod to the hierarchy of angels around the throne. It was originally a more occult-like design, but it took a weird turn and I tried to combine my knowledge and interest of other religions and Islam into my personal taste and interest of more esoteric designs. I then Screen Printed the image I had drawn onto the kite and went in with acrylic paint and sponges to add the details, textures and colors of the sky and wings. Unfortunately, the paint proved to add too much weight to the kite, and it never got up in the sky, but I thought the design was nice.